


stop and build a home

by wearethefoxes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Depression, F/M, Female Character of Color, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Insomnia, Major Original Character(s), Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sex Slavery, Post-Avengers (2012), coulson and his strays, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethefoxes/pseuds/wearethefoxes
Summary: The people are starting to call her Viper. Fury calls her "Specialist," with a stern eyebrow and his hand on his holster. Stark calls her "Red Scare" or "comrade" or "kid," that last with a bit of sneer at first and then, later, a bit of good humor. The Captain calls her "Agent" or "Sokolova," or "Suri," when he thinks they're friends.Coulson doesn't call her anything anymore, because Coulson's dead.OR what if Coulson had taken in another stray and made her a SHIELD agent? What happens when she accidentally becomes an Avenger?





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! this is an au that i thought of ages ago that i'm sure no one is interested in! i don't really have a ton written yet but since i'm mostly sure no one will give a fuck about this au i thought i would post this lil prologue first to get me motivated.
> 
> this is an avengers au. the basic premise is that suri, our main character and my dear OC, was recruited by coulson to shield around 4 years before the avengers begins (idk what the timeline is supposed to be between iron man and the avengers so ??? who knows if that's pre- or post- iron man 1). she's still a baby agent when loki comes and steals the tesseract. the one main difference as far as this story's adherence to canon besides suri's existence and importance is that instead of loki mind controlling clint he mind controls natasha. the movie ends the same and follows the canon plot but obviously it's not canon to any mcu movies past the avengers. anyway suri accidentally becomes an avenger bc she can't mind her own business and i love her i hope you do too :))
> 
> ALSO i'm aware that there's a villian in the marvel comics by the name of viper aka madame hydra (idk if she's in any of the xmen movies or anything i don't follow those) but shhhh she doesn't exist here ok? ok.
> 
> since i really think no one will care please comment/kudo/subscribe if you give a shit. also this has no beta and i haven't done a great read through since i wrote it so also comment for any mistakes :)))
> 
> love you all!!!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suri disobeys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things to know before we begin:  
> 1\. our MC is suri sokolova, a 22 year old agent of shield. she was recruited by coulson four years ago on a mission gone fubar, when she saved his, clint, and natasha's life. that's all u get for now lmaooo.  
> 2\. i started writing/plotting this before black panther. suri is not meant to be a name rip-off of shuri and i'm a lil mad but it's okay they're both my babies  
> 3\. this chapter starts immediately after loki has stolen the tesseract in NM and fled. 
> 
> if you read this chapter and think "coulson/suri ??" honestly fuck off he's literally double her age ya nasty

She’s stationed in Chicago when the tesseract happens.

She’s just gotten back from a mission hours ago, released from medical and eating a late dinner alone in the hallway when a phone rings in the Chicago Director’s office. She doesn’t look up. The person on the other end of the phone is too quiet even for her to hear, but Director Martin says, “Shit,” and then, “right away, sir,” and then slams the phone down in its cradle, breathing unsteadily for moment. Suri has risen from her seat against the wall and moved silently towards the Director’s office when another door bangs open down the hall, and then SHIELD is flooded with movement, agents gathering guns and making phone calls and barking orders to junior agents. For a moment the noise overwhelms her, but she’s had lots of practice narrowing her focus. She hears, “a situation in New Mexico,” and, “Romanoff has been compromised,” before the Director notices her hovering in the hallway.

“Specialist Sokolova,” she says sharply, “this is a matter for senior agents only.”

Suri opens her mouth, then closes it. She nods. She keeps her head down as she walks down the hallway, but she’s listening. She always is.

\--

She sits in her room. The hallway outside is a study in controlled chaos, agents shouting at each other, barking into phones. Someone yells, “Wheels up in 10!” and next door someone mutters, “shit.”

She doesn’t have clearance here, and she knows it. Any situation that compromises Romanoff has got to be a  _ situation _ . She’s level 2 clearance. She’s hardly even an agent - Director Fury refuses to promote her to “asset”, and she’s not like Romanoff or even Barton. SHIELD barely trusts her. If Suri is insubordinate, she’s out.

“Seven minutes!” someone yells.

She thinks of Coulson’s voice through the phone not five hours ago.  _ I’ll see you soon, ptichka, and you can tell me all about Sitwell’s shitshow of a mission.  _ She’d been on the quinjet still, so she hadn’t allowed herself to smile. She’d said, “okay,” and, “as long as you tell me about New Mexico,” and he’d laughed because she wasn't supposed to know, and she’d hung up on him.

“Five minutes!”

She looks around her room. She’s got some of the smallest quarters on base, but that makes it easier now, to grab the rest of her knives and guns, her knapsack packed with clothes. She hasn’t yet changed out of her SHIELD uniform, and she doesn’t now.

She takes a deep breath.

She stands on her bed, reaches up to the ceiling, and climbs inside the vent.

\--

Three minutes later, she’s on the quinjet as it flies out of Chicago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "ptichka" (Птичка) is a russian endearment meaning "little bird" or "birdy" (the internet told me this so it could be v v wrong)


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers + Suri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weeee a new chapter!! takes us through avengers canon really quickly and then right on past it! idk how to write any of the avengers and u can probably tell!!
> 
> i changed some things around in the previous chapter, mostly just bs about how i'm structuring shield which changes designations. it's all very minor.
> 
> i don't describe suri physically in any great detail bc the characters all know her so it would be awkward for them to talk about it at length, but i'll give you a bit. she's tiny, about the same height as natasha (scar jo is 5'3") but with negligible curves which makes her a lot smaller. she's middle eastern (her past is shady so she doesn't know what country specifically sorry) and dark skinned. she's not super conventionally attractive either; her eyes are pretty hooded and overall her face is pretty bony but its ok we love her
> 
> also i finished all of my finals yesterday and i was going to post this chapter last night but then i spent two hours researching russian swears instead lol

“Who is Coulson yelling at?” Captain Rogers asks. He doesn’t direct the question at anyone in particular, but when Stark looks delightedly towards Clint for answers, Rogers does too.

“Director of SHIELD’s Chicago base,” he says, looking up from Sitwell’s search for Romanoff to answer them. He hesitates, then adds, “they lost an agent.”

“Lost an agent?” Rogers and Stark repeat, Rogers with a great deal of incredulity and Stark with increasing glee.

“They didn’t lose her,” Sitwell says irritably, not looking up from his computer. “She went AWOL.” He scowls. “She does that.”

They’re still looking at Clint. Behind them, Coulson has hung up the phone and is now talking in heated whispers to Fury and Maria about the situation. That’s what he’s calling it now, a situation. Romanoff is compromised and the tesseract is missing, but Sokolova being missing is what’s got Coulson yelling into the phone and fighting with the director.

“She’s one of Coulson’s,” he explains tightly.

“Like you and Romanoff?” Rogers asks.

Clint’s mouth twists downward. “Enough like me and Romanoff.”

Rogers’ eyebrows furrow at his response, and Stark looks almost giddy to pick that apart, when Sitwell says, “Fury, I’ve got a hit on Selvig!” and the chase begins.

\--

Natasha wakes up on the helicarrier with no idea what day it is or how long she’s been out, but she does know that she’s alone in her head again.

The floor is humming beneath her hands and against her back, letting her know she’s sitting in a corner on the floor without opening her eyes. Even behind her eyelids the world is spinning and muffled as her mind puts blue-tinged memories in their place. She doesn’t know how she got here, free of Loki, but she’s grateful and still disoriented enough not to question it just yet. As her mind settles she can feel her body twitching with minute shocks as some of the worst memories hit her.

Someone next to her says, “Easy, Romanoff,” and Natasha startles into the wall next to her, drawing her gun and opening her eyes at the same time.

Sokolova doesn’t move, looks at her steadily as Natasha’s heart races in her chest. She’s crouched on the opposite side of the alcove, shins facing Natasha’s side and knees pulled to her chest. Her head is tipped back against the wall as she watches, eyes deceptively half-lidded. A knife sits in her lap, and she isn’t holding it but her fingers rest across the hilt. SHIELD uniform, no comm unit, non-regulation knife. She looks tired, wired, and blank.

Natasha swallows and lowers her gun into her lap. “What happened?” Her voice is rough; time feels fluid in her blue-mind, and she can’t remember the last time she ate, or had a drink of water. She doesn’t remember being taken down, or what she was doing before that.

Silently, Sokolova passes her a sealed water bottle. She waits for Natasha to take a long pull before she speaks. “Your unit took out two engines. You fired the round of explosives for the first one, then split off while the team took care of the other engine. Both are stabilized now. You went off alone on one of the sub-levels.”

She takes another drink of water and swallows that too before she asks, “How did….” She gestures towards her pounding head, unsure how to finish.

“Cognitive recalibration,” Sokolova says. She gestures towards her own temple with the butt of her knife in demonstration. “I was in the ceiling.”

That explains how she was able to get the drop on her. Literally, it seems. “Where was Barton? Or Coulson?” Or anyone else.

Something twists across Sokolova’s face, there and gone too quickly for Natasha to identify. “There was a situation with Hulk.”

Natasha nods, accepting this, suppressing a shudder at the image of the Hulk tearing through the helicarrier.

Abruptly, Sokolova pushes herself to standing. She’s not looking at Natasha, tucking her knife away and checking the rest of her weapons. She says, “You should stop by Medical for your head before you meet the others for debrief.”

Eyes narrowed, Natasha asks, “And will they be expecting me?”

Sokolova doesn’t answer her question. She says, “Fury is not a patient man,” before she drops into a crouch and springs upwards, disappearing back inside the vents.  

Once Natasha is sure she’s gone, she collapses back against the wall. She rocks back and forth, aching head in her hands. “Боже, что я сделал,” she mutters, over and over again. _My god, what have I done._

\--

“How did you snap out of it?” Clint asks. He won’t stop looking at her, eyes running up and down her body over and over again. Even during the debrief, the only time he’d fully looked away from her was with Phil, with the bloodied trading cards, with _lost my one good eye -_

She exhales. He’s still watching her.

Behind them, Stark says, “We are _not_ soldiers.” She doesn’t hear what the Captain says in response.

“It was Sokolova,” Natasha says finally, eyes on the blood smeared across the glass of the table. Her head is aching. She feels cold.

“ _Sokolova?”_

She looks at him in surprise, and then, a beat too late, it clicks in her head. “She was off-comms.”

“She wasn’t just off-comms; she was AWOL. Vanished the moment she got word about PEGASUS. Coulson was worried. And to think - fuck, to think the whole time….”

“She was here,” Natasha finishes for him. She rubs at her forehead, above her eyebrow.

“She was on the fucking helicarrier,” Clint confirms grimly. He grinds his knuckles into his upper lip, his other hand tight on her thigh beneath the table. He looks a bit shell-shocked still, present enough, but between his attention on her and the fucking cards, he’s starting to look manic with it.

“Clint,” she says suddenly, a thought occurring to her, and he looks to her again. For a moment she shudders at the blue of his eyes, but she pushes on. “Phil- Coulson….he wasn’t….that’s not why he-”

“No,” Clint interrupts, shaking his head vehemently. “Even where the girl is confirmed, he’s still a professional. He wasn’t looking for her. He was going after Loki.”

“And no one was going after me,” Natasha says. She’s only thinking out loud, better for her aching head, but Clint’s face blanches in guilt. He rubs at his mouth again. “I think that’s why Sokolova did it. You were after the Hulk, and Phil was,” she swallows. “Phil was down, so Sokolova was going after me.”

Clint’s brows rise in disbelief. “What, you think she saved you, because of Coulson?”

“Well, it wasn’t out of some great love for me.” Her eyes widen. “Do you think she was there when Loki-”

“ _Son of a bitch_ ,” Stark says with enough emphasis that they both turn to look at him. He strides out, the Captain following behind. He turns back to them at the door. “Suit up,” he says tightly. “We found Loki.”

\--

She only has a moment to register the Levithan crashing towards her, pushed from the sky by the Hulk, to hear Clint screaming in her ear, to think of the world washing blue and all the lives ended by her hand, to close her eyes to it - before she’s yanked out of the way.

Another breathless moment. She can’t comprehend how she’s not dead, how she’s coughing dust still pouring in from the street, how her hands are skinned on the rumble, how the light comes in through the window, how she’s not dead.

A groan from beside her. Natasha blinks rapidly to clear the dust from her eyes when two small, strong hands grip her upper arms and pull her to standing. “What were you thinking?” a familiar voice yells at her, and when her vision finally clear, Sokolova is tugging her further into the building and looking furious.

It takes another moment for her brain to fully come online again. Someone is still screaming in her ear, so she takes her comm out, distracted. “Sokolova?” she says blankly. “You’re here?”

Sokolova is still looking her over, checking for injuries. She looks just as dusty and battered as Natasha feels, in her SHIELD-issue suit and still commless. After she sees that Natasha has nothing physically wrong with her, she paces away, her hands clenching into fists next to her thighs. It’s clear she’s listening to the fight outside as she closes her eyes, face turned into the sun. Natasha turns away from it, breathing erratic. Two minutes ago, she thought she was going to die. If she goes back out there, she still might. She feels distanced from the aches in her body and the worry the others seem to feel about the fate of the world.

“You can’t die,” Sokolova says. She’s closer and quieter than Natasha thought she might be. “Just because Coulson is dead doesn’t mean you get to be too. You don’t have that right.” Natasha’s breath catches at that, and she twitches but doesn’t turn. Sokolova exhales heavily. “Ради бога - answer your comm, your team all thinks you were crushed.”

Natasha looks over her shoulder at her in surprise. Sokolova flicks her eyes to the comm in Natasha’s hand, where she can hear Roger’s voice, followed quickly by Clint’s. She puts the comm back into her ear. “This is Romanoff,” she says, and the Captain exhales and Clint mutters vehemently, “son of a _bitch,_ Nat,” while something explodes close in the background. She continues, “My ride got knocked out of the sky by an offshoot from Thor, but I’m okay.”

“My deepest apologies, Black Widow,” Thor says.

“No offense, Spider Bite, but _how_? We all saw that Levithan hit you.” Stark, this time.

She glances again at Sokolova; she’s tipped her face into the sun again, but from the twitch of her fingers Natasha can tell she’s listening. She hesitates. “Sokolova pulled me out of the way,” she finally says, and the agent in question opens her eyes and turns towards Natasha.

“Mother _fuck_ \- _how_?” Clint says. Natasha raises an eyebrow at her.

“The quinjet.” When Natasha’s eyebrow rises further in response, Sokolova says, “You were out of it, the Captain was communicating with Stark, and Hawkeye was watching you.” She shrugs. “I hitched a ride.”

“Damn,” Rogers mutters, clearly having heard every word. Natasha relays it to Clint and Stark.

“And what’s the kid been doing? Sharpening her knives? Crying to Papa Fury?” Stark again, managing to convey the depth of his disdain despite his repulsors firing in the background.

There is a narrowing at the corners of Sokolova’s eyes that expresses her annoyance, a tell Natasha recognizes from Phil. “I was covering Stark’s perimeter on the ground. Moving civilians to safety.” Natasha relays this too, then Sokolova says, directly to her, “What were you doing, riding on top of one of these things?”

“I think I can close the portal,” Natasha says, and Sokolova’s eyebrows twitch. “I read Selvig’s plans while I was.” Her eyes flutter, and she swallows. “While I was under.”

Sokolova sizes her up for a long, silent moment, while the others make commentary from the other end. Natasha tunes them out and sizes Sokolova up in turn. She’s smaller even than Natasha, but she stands with a lightness, a readiness to move, that reminds Natasha of a bird. It’s different and less planted than Natasha’s resting stance. She’s got several knives tucked on her SHIELD uniform - it’s a stealth suit, standard issue, and it’s dusty and has some minor tears to it. She’s got two handguns and ammunition strapped at her waist. Any other weapons are tucked away in one of the many pockets or lost in the black fabric. Natasha has heard Phil complaining in the past at Fury’s unwillingness to promote Sokolova up to Asset, but she doesn’t think she’s ever understood it until this moment, with Sokolova’s eyes cool and intelligent on her, her hands resting lightly on knives, looking like she could disappear into a crowd in a second’s time; and knowing that she’s been doing what Natasha and Steve have been doing, on the ground and by herself, with no serum, no shield, no custom weapons, no team, and very little experience to speak of. Natasha’s gut twists - in resentment, in grief, in literal and physical hunger, she doesn’t know.

“Got an extra comm?” Sokolova says, after an eternity. For a moment Natasha doesn’t understand, and then she turns away, mostly to irritate Sokolova with the illusion of being cut off.

“Captain,” Natasha says crisply. “Specialist Sokolova has requested to join our unit. Alright if I give her a comm?”

The others are silent for a moment, and then -

“What, the little girl with the disappearing act wants part of the team? I know Ms. Rushman wrote some unsavory things about my team work abilities in her report, but at least I showed up.” Stark.

"Another warrior! More skills and hands are needed.” Thor.

“Nat, are you sure about this?” Clint.

And Rogers, after a moment of thought: “Widow, get back up in the air and shut that thing down. Link her in and send her to me.”

\--

Suri can’t explain the way the bottom drops out of her stomach when Stark takes the missile into the portal.

She’s taken back viscerally to sitting in the vent and watching Loki’s staff pierce through Coulson’s chest, to Fury stepping back as paramedics called a time of death, to sitting on the phone with Coulson and listening to him rant and rave about Stark and his antics and the fucking notecards, of Coulson saying, “there’s no Iron Man without him,” in a quiet, almost reverent voice when Stark was dying, and all she can think as his repulsors disappear from view is _we can’t lose another one._ She doesn’t look away from the portal.

She hears more than sees Captain Rogers mouth open to call it, and she lays a hand on his arm without thinking. She says, “Barton, do you see him?”

She almost thinks he’s going to refuse to answer her on principle, but she can see him looking up into the sky, still on top of a fucking building. He says, “yes,” and sounds surprised.

“Is he going to make it?” Rogers asks, and even though she can see it herself, she holds her breath for the answer.

“Yes. Nat, now,” Barton says. Suri doesn’t look away from the portal, and neither does Hawkeye, and neither does Rogers. Stark is a red-gold blur as he falls through space, but she waits for Rogers to exhale as Stark makes the portal before she does, too.

\--

Fury shows up when the sky starts to turn orange with sunset.

She was surprised to be invited out to shawarma, but only just. Between saving Romanoff’s life, fighting alongside him in the streets, and calling out to Hawkeye to save Stark, she’d seen the admiration building in the Captain’s eyes. Stark hadn’t looked surprised to see her there when he woke up, either, and though Romanoff had eyed her and Banner kept his distance, she could see the invitation coming before it was offered (offered, moments after Loki said, “I’ll take that drink now,” and his eyes flicked over her and then back again, standing between the Captain and Thor. “And who is this little one?” he’d said, leering. Hawkeye’s grip on his bow had tightened, and she knew that had been part of it, too).

What did surprise Suri was the outrage when Fury came to collect her.

He stepped into the shop, eye flicking over the broken lights, the dust, the debris, the piles and piles of discarded meal baskets on the table, before settling on the team with Suri right in the middle of it, seated again between Captain Rogers and Thor for the best sightlines. He’d looked at her with his one eye, considering, and she knew what was coming before he spoke. She wiped at her face and sat up straighter in the chair.

“Good work today,” Fury said, eye lingering meaningfully on Stark for a moment, and then he looked at the Captain. “Debrief tomorrow at noon, SHIELD headquarters, Barton and Romanoff will know where to go. Sokolova, you’re with me.”

She’d already risen from her chair when Banner said, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” and Fury stilled.

“Excuse me?”

“We just fought aliens and won, and she was part of that. Why are you taking her?” Banner’s protest was unexpected, given the amount of space he’d kept, the way he’d not quite looked at her, but he looked genuinely upset now, and it was catching. Stark was glaring too, and the Captain sat up straighter in his chair, eyes intense on Fury. Even Barton was looking over his shoulder.

She could see Fury taking all of this in, too, but his face didn’t change. “Specialist Sokolova is still an agent of SHIELD, one who has been AWOL for the past several days. She’ll be with you all at debrief tomorrow, but for now she’s my agent.”

They’d let her go, Stark with a parting quip, Banner with his face uneasy, Rogers with his eyes hard on Fury, and Barton passively, looking at Romanoff who hadn’t moved the entire time.

Now, standing at parade rest in Fury’s office, she pushes them all from her mind and watches the way he rests his hands on the desk and looks at her with his one good eye.

“Sokolova,” he says. She nods. “In the past three days, you have left your post to join a mission way above your clearance level, been a stowaway on multiple SHIELD transport vessels, evaded your superior officers, stolen SHIELD equipment, impersonated an agent, accessed information above your clearance level, disobeyed direct orders from a superior officer, and caused me a major fucking headache. Is that correct?”

She nods.

“Did I leave anything out?”

She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head.

“Care to tell me why I’m not firing you and carting you off for treason right fucking now?”

She looks back at him steadily. She doesn’t answer.

Eventually, he sighs and sit back in his chair. She knows it’s deliberate, to signal his surrender, and she doesn’t move until he says, “Sit _down_ , Sokolova,” and then she sinks gratefully into the chair.

“I want you to join the Avengers Initiative.”

She’s been expecting to hear it for a while now, but she still has to work to keep her breathing steady. She says nothing.

Fury sighs and rubs at his temple. “Stark would as soon betray me as work with me, Banner resents me, Rogers doesn’t trust me, Romanoff’s a mess, and Barton is going to be too busy looking after her to be of any use to me. I need a man on the inside, and I’d like you to be that for me.”

Her hands are clenched tightly in her lap. She’s sore all over from the fight, but she can feel the stiff tension in her muscles that’s specifically from how painfully straight she’s sitting right now, perched on the edge of this chair. She forces herself not to touch her knives.

“Do I have a choice?” she asks tightly. She can still remember Banner’s voice rising in her defense.

Fury’s mouth quirks in a humorless smile. “Sure. Join the Avengers Initiative,” he gives a weighted pause, “or be investigated for treason.”

It’s quiet enough to hear a pin drop. For one horrible second, she’s viscerally grateful that Coulson is not around to be a part of this moment.

Her breathing feels shallow, but remains steady and even.

She nods.

Fury smiles again, this time with satisfaction. “Good. Agent Hill will escort you to your room; there’ll be briefing packets waiting for you.” And he looks to his computer in a clear dismissal. She doesn’t allow herself to take a moment before she rises from her chair. She leaves the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

\--

Fury makes them wait for him at SHIELD. A random SHIELD agent had deposited them in the room (“Looks like a board room at SI,” Stark said with disdain upon entry) and then they had been left alone. Sokolova had been notably absent, but it had been her file on the tablets in the middle of the table. Steve pages through it once it becomes clear Fury isn’t showing up any time soon. Stark is pacing behind him, reading the file on a tablet of his own, Banner is staring out the window at New York, Thor sits a few chairs down from Steve similarly engaged in the file, and Barton and Romanoff are sitting across from him, reading separate files, disconnected except for their knees touching under the table.

It’s thirty minutes after the hour before Fury shows up, bursting into the room with Hill behind him. Stark makes an unsavory comment under his breath about dramatic entrances; he’s ignored.

“Good,” Fury says, settling at the front of the table, “I see you’re all doing your reading. So, is Sokolova an Avenger?”

Steve sets his tablet down. Banner finally looks away from the window.

“I’m sorry, what?” Stark says, and Fury shrugs.

“She was never part of the original plan, she showed up late to the battle, she wasn’t around beforehand. If you want her to be an Avenger, she is. If not it’s no skin off my nose.”

Banner slowly takes a seat at the table and reaches for a file.

“She fought admirably during the battle,” Thor says, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Is that not what makes one an Avenger?”

“She didn’t exactly assemble with the rest of us,” Stark points out.

“Neither did Romanoff,” Banner says absently. He’s absorbed in the file, and misses the glare Barton levels at him.

“Captain?” Fury asks, and Steve starts.

He thinks for a moment. He looks at Sokolova’s face in the file, young and blank-eyed in a way that reminds him of soldiers. She’s eighteen in the photo, barely; that was four years ago. He says, “I’m with Thor on this one. She was there for the battle; she helped save the world, she was a valuable asset. I don’t see why not.”

Banner says, “She’s awfully young.”

“How do we know she’ll be able to have our backs?” Romanoff says, off the back of Banner’s comment, but he looks up at her.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says sharply. “I’d say she’s more than proven herself in the field. She’s saved _your_ life more than once.” He stops, takes a breath. “She’s just - young.”

“I served with soldiers younger than her in the war,” Steve says, not allowing himself to go back there in his head. “They were heroes; she can be too.”

“She already is, if you ask the public,” Stark says, and before anyone can ask, he flicks at his tablet and files show up on the wall, on all of their tablets.

“What is this?” Fury asks, turning to look.

“Twitter,” Steve says.

Every eye in the room turns to him. Steve shrugs uncomfortably and doesn’t elaborate; he’s been out of the ice for three weeks, and a very helpful waitress gave him a crash course in the internet when she said, “wireless,” and he said, “radio?” He’s not had a lot of time to learn it all, but he’s not completely hopeless with what he has learned.

“Right,” Stark says, clears his throat and turns back to the wall. “So this is the most popular twitter thread about the battle. A bunch of Avengers related hashtags are trending - Iron Man near the top of course, thank you, it’s even mostly good press. This guy is a professional photographer, got some good shots of the battle. Sokolova saved his life doing perimeter on the ground, apparently; he’s got good pictures of her. Says she moves ‘snake-like’ - he’s a nature photographer, don’t blame him too much, but it definitely stuck. A bunch of people replied to his thread talking about her, with shitty iPhone pictures of her too, they’ve adopted his name for her, call her ‘Viper.’”

As he talks, he flicks through the tweets. Stark is right, the guy’s photographs are good. Shots of the portal, Iron Man punching a Chitauri out of the sky, Hulk jumping onto the side of a building, Thor calling lighting from the sky, and Sokolova, repeatedly, knives out, on the ground, guiding civilians out of the way, standing in front of kids while shooting Chitauri in the face. It’s clear that the beginning of the thread was made during the battle, as the pictures are poorer quality and his tweets are confused, panicked, uninformed; it’s equally clear that he added on later with stories and pictures in direct response to negative press related to the Avengers.

Other people have replied too, with their photos, their stories; and a lot of civilians stories feature Sokolova, small but quick and fearless, saving their lives; or Steve and Romanoff on the ground, Iron Man blasting an alien away from a civilian, Chitauri with arrows sticking out, grainy shots of Barton falling from a building. People have added videos of their stories, news responses, shaky footage of the battle.

“SHIELD made a statement already, but it was pretty general, mostly about the battle, and people want to know who everyone is. I mean, they know me and the Hulk, and a few people have pieced together the whole Captain America thing, with his fists of freedom, but a lot of people want to know about the flying man in the cape, or the guy with the arrows, or the redhead and her taser bracelets, or the tiny chick and her knives who directly saved their lives. A lot of people want to know about that one.”

The conference room is quiet. Steve reads through the responses on his tablet, throat tight, cheeks red, humbled by their gratitude.

“So I think,” Stark concludes, crossing his arms and glaring at Fury, “if we were to _not_ include her in the Avengers, that the public would have a lot of unsavory things to say about it.”

“SHIELD doesn’t make decisions based on public opinion,” Hill says.

Stark snorts. “Well that much is obvious. But I don’t see why we wouldn’t include her, either.” His eyes flick to Steve; he gestures to Thor. “It’s like they said,” he says, shrugging. “She punched enough aliens with us, she had our backs when it counted. I say we bring her in.”

Fury sighs and sits down. “Fine. Sure. Any objections?”

Steve looks down the table at his team. Banner shakes his head. Thor says, “she is welcome to join us!” Romanoff’s lips are pinched up tight, but when she catches him looking her shakes her head minutely. Barton is turned in toward Romanoff, looking out the window; he doesn’t reply. Fury is looking at Steve, eyebrow raised. Steve shrugs, then shakes his head.

“All right,” Fury says, sighing again. “Hill, bring her in.”

\--

In the room next door, Suri sits in a chair, one leg tucked up underneath her and the other pulled to her chest. She’s got one tablet propped up next to her and another flat on the table. When Hill comes to fetch her, she’s paging through Banner’s file idly, having memorized the contents last night.

“They’re ready for you,” Hill says. Suri nods, flicking her eyes pointedly to the other tablet that’s displaying live footage of the room next door. The volume is low but still audible.

“Wait a moment,” Suri says. “Like you really had to come get me.”

Hill hesitates. She takes in Suri, tucked up tight in the chair, bruised and scraped a little bloody, watching a team of superheroes talk about whether she’s worth anything while their files lay open in front of her. Slowly, she sits down.

“I won’t tell them you were listening,” she says, and Suri knows it’s a kindness. She holds Hill’s eyes for a moment, gratitude and recognition passing between them, before she nods and drops her gaze. They leave the room together a few minutes later.

\--

“The main issue for the Avengers going forward,” Fury says, standing at the head of the table with his hands on his holsters, “is the WSC.”

“The what?” Banner asks, voicing Steve’s question.

Fury opens his mouth, but Stark is quicker. “World Security Council. They oversee SHIELD, and they’re a bunch of assholes who don’t like the Avengers Initiative and ordered a nuc on the entire island of  Manhattan.”

Fury nods, though his eye twitches a little at the sound of Stark’s voice. “That’s what we’re here about actually. They didn’t like it very much when I disobeyed them by allowing you guys out or when Stark diverted their missile.”

“But we went out on our own,” Steve says, and doesn’t miss the incredulous look Stark shoots him. “I’m aware that we were pushed into it, but we didn’t stop to ask for permission.” He’s still smarting a little about the cards. Barton had informed him quietly after the battle that Coulson’s would never carry those cards with him, that they were most likely in his locker or his quarters.

Fury shakes his head. “Regardless, they’re looking for ways to shut down the initiative or exercise their power over it, and they’ve set their sights on one of you.”

Stark snorts. “Please, I’d like to see them try and touch me. SI has an _army_ of lawyers.’”

Hill shakes her head. “Not you.” And her eyes flick across from Stark.

“Me,” Romanoff says, without looking up from her hands, folded neatly on top of the table.

“That’s bullshit,” Barton spits immediately. “She was _mind controlled_. She’s not accountable for what she did!”

“It was still my hands, my plans,” Romanoff says. Quiet. Hollow.

Barton glares at her. “You _shut up_. Your guilt complex isn’t helping.” He looks past her, at Hill and Fury. “The only one who should be punished is Loki.”

Fury dips his head. “Maybe. But Thor is taking him back to Asgard to answer for his crimes, which makes Romanoff a convenient scapegoat.”

“That’s _bullshit!_ ” Barton explodes, and Steve winces from the sheer volume of it. In the corner of his eye, he sees Sokolova doing the same.

“Agent Barton,” Hill says sternly. “Stand down. We’re not here to point fingers.” Barton subsides, but only barely, still glaring fiercely. 

“Then what are you trying to do?” Banner asks, sounding weary.

“Collect evidence to exonerate her,” Fury says, and everyone very abruptly shuts up. “Since Selvig was able to go against the programming enough to build in a kill switch, the WSC doesn’t think mind control is a legitimate enough excuse. So if anyone has anything, now would be the time to share it.”

Steve says nothing, thrumming with indignation. In his eyes, Romanoff is absolved by joining them to fight the Chitauri, and it smarts that he doesn’t have the leverage here to push that point the way he did in the army. He may not know them very well yet, but this is his _team_ , and damned if he’s going to let some government assholes take them down.

“She shot you in the chest,” Sokolova says into the silence.

“What?” Stark says, sounding bewildered.

Sokolova looks up, barely, and meets Fury’s eye across the table. There’s a tension there that Steve doesn’t understand. “She shot you in the chest,” Sokolova says again, clearer now but still quiet. “You both wear vests, and she’s a good shot, but she aimed for the chest.”

There’s silence again, as everyone considers. Finally, Stark snorts and drops down in a chair next to Steve. “That’s….pretty smart, actually. Anyone got anything else?"

“She didn’t take down the helicarrier,” Barton says.

“She didn’t?” Fury challenges, eyebrow rising.

“You and I both know that if Nat had wanted that carrier out of the sky it would be,” Barton says, eyebrowing right back. “Instead, she damaged it in a way that could be repaired. Didn’t even use the kill codes.”

Fury pinches the bridge of his nose. Stark mutters, “Kill codes? Who designs an aircraft carrier with _kill codes_?”

Ignoring Stark, Steve says, “She knew about the failsafe. She must have read those plans while still under, and she understand them well enough to utilize it when she came out of it, but she didn’t rat him out.”

Hill nods slowly, typing notes on her tablet. “Fury, these could work,” she says.

Fury nods decisively. “That should be enough to halt them for now. Barton, Romanoff, Sokolova, Banner, you’re quartered at headquarters until further notice. Rogers, Stark, keep your heads down. And Stark, that means no media statements or anything either. SHIELD will draft and release an updated statement. You’re all dismissed.” They all move to get up, but Stark's voice stops them.

“Wait,” Stark says. “What about Coulson?”

Romanoff twitches and Barton’s eyes close. Sokolova exhales slowly, but she’s watching Fury, whose jaw tightens. “What _about_ Coulson?” Fury asks.

Stark is glaring, jaw tight, but his eyes are a little bright from this distance. “He was an agent for a long time. Will there be any sort of - service?”

Fury works his jaw, glaring right back at Stark. The room is holding its breath.

Finally, Fury exhales and releases his jaw. “No,” he says shortly. “The body will be sent back to his family in Chicago. Any services will happen at the behest of the family and will private affairs.”

Steve thinks he can hear Stark’s teeth grinding together the more Fury speaks, but he just nods tightly and strides out of the room, the door swinging behind him.

\--

Coulson’s office is dark. There’s a bit of a draft, mostly from the vent cover being undone. It looks like any other office; the file cabinets, the comfortable chair behind the desk and the two uncomfortable chairs in front of it, the pens and papers stacked on the desk, the suit jacket hanging off the back of the chair. It looks like any other office, except that Suri knows what to look for. She sees instead the coffee pot and the collection of dirty mugs, each one different. She sees the knick-knacks, mostly gaudy tourist tchotchkes that she knows are presents from Barton. She sees the tiny oval frame by the computer monitor that holds a picture of his sister and her family. She sees the giant black leather couch against the far wall and knows it’s where Barton comes to fill out mission reports, where Phil would sometimes crash if stayed at the office too late. She sees the cabinets and knows that some of the contain extra dress shirts, socks, and ties for such occasions. She looks at this bland bureaucratic office and just sees Phil, everywhere, and she never did get to spend any significant amounts of time here, but she can see herself in it, perched on the back of one of those god-awful chairs and complaining about Sitwell, coming to take his coffee, maybe bringing him new pictures of his family from Chicago.

He always said they’d have time to work together, once Fury stopped dragging his feet about promoting her, once he got taken off Stark’s detail. Once Barton and Romanoff came around.

She wonders how long until someone comes and cleans it all out.

She closes her eyes, fists clenched in the dark, throat and nose and eyes burning. _I’ll see you soon ptichka._

Her chest aches and aches and aches.

Out in the hallway, a door opens and voices spill out. Suri wipes her eyes, stands on the chair, and climbs back inside the vent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> steve's helpful waitress: [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pov4qMSfg9w)
> 
> Ради бога - for god's sake, for heaven's sake, etc
> 
> also i'm doing my best with russian but the internet can only do so much.
> 
> comments and kudos are love <3


End file.
